June 22, 2014 AT 1:00 am

New Adaptive Electronics Can Deploy Grip and Change Shape When Implanted

New biologically adaptive electronic devices capable of changing shape and gripping 3D objects once heated could lead to big developments in the area of medical implants. From UTDallas:

The rigid devices become soft when heated. Outside the body, the device is primed for the position it will take inside the body.

During testing, researchers used heat to deploy the device around a cylinder as small as 2.25 millimeters in diameter, and implanted the device in rats. They found that after implantation, the device had morphed with the living tissue while maintaining excellent electronic properties.

“Flexible electronics today are deposited on plastic that stays the same shape and stiffness the whole time,” Reeder said. “Our research comes from a different angle and demonstrates that we can engineer a device to change shape in a more biologically compatible way.”